“It might have been detected months ago, but last year’s solar storms damaged surveillance satellites, and severe cuts in NASA’s budget have delayed their replacement.
“The odds of all this happening were minuscule, but happening it is, and scientists with the Skywatch Project say there is virtually no chance it will miss us.
“Some of you are wondering if this impending event is in any way connected with the murder of Ngunda Aran earlier this afternoon, by Arkansas’ late Governor Marius Cook. Our CNN staff has called up excerpts from speeches by Mr. Aran, in which he predicted that exactly such an event would take place, this year, immediately following the death of a new incarnation of the Infinite Soul.” [Sandow looks away from the camera.] “I believe we’re ready.”
The tour crew knew the approximate content, but watched anyway. The man on the screen was the pre-Assumption Ngunda Aran: kind, wise, and entirely human. They could tell the difference instantly.
Carl Lavender hadn’t before heard of the guru’s asteroid prediction. It sobered him even more than the collision forecast. When it was over, he went outside to tell the crowd to turn on their car radios to KLRN, or CNN Radio, where surely the meteor report would be playing. But even as he stepped out, he heard someone shouting the news from their car door: “Turn on your radios, folks! To KLRN! God’s sending down his revenge! A big old meteor’s coming down to hit Little Rock at 4:52 p.m.!”
There was a general exodus from the fence to the vehicles parked along both shoulders. They did not at once drive away though. Instead they turned on radios to hear for themselves. Most, Lavender told himself, would listen, then head home to be with their families.
But the crazies around the country? God only knew what they’d do. Bad things, he told himself, bad things. As he turned to reenter the bus, he hoped headquarters got those reinforcements to him quickly.
* * *
Lee had gotten out of the bus, Duke Cochran with her. Parked where it was, all they’d been able to see through its windows was the machine shed on one side and cottonwood trunks on the other.
What was left of the crowd stood around the parked cars and pickups, or sat in them, listening.
“How long do you suppose we’ll be held here?” Lee asked.
“I doubt if even the sergeant knows,” Duke answered, then shrugged. “The world’s going to be a different place, that much I’ll bet on.” Five fifty-two Eastern Time, he thought. That’s 4:52 here. He looked at his watch. Less than an hour. He wondered if it would impact Little Rock, then dismissed the notion. But if it did, would the shock wave reach them here, dozens of miles away? Probably, he thought.
Wherever it hit, a lot of people would die, and what kind of world would the casualties be reborn into? Better in some ways, if Dove’s forecasts were right, but there’d be heavy adjustments to make. People would have to abandon a lot of long-held must-haves and must-dos and can’ts—a process the Depression and the Green Flu had begun, and the asteroid would accelerate big-time.
If it hit in the Atlantic, the tsunami would probably take out Boston, New York City, and Florida. Funnel up Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac, the Saint Lawrence, and take out Baltimore, D.C., Montreal. And the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark . . . ! And up the Thames through London! Good God! The population of those places totalled scores of millions.
It would be a very different world.
* * *
Lee’s interests and education hadn’t given her a sense of planetary dynamics; her focus was her family. Turning, she reboarded the bus, planning to bug the sergeant and Lor Lu for action on leaving, getting back to the Ranch. And there in his usual front seat was Lor Lu, with the sergeant sitting beside him in conversation. Instead of interrupting, she listened.
” . . . was he really the Messiah? A new Messiah?”
Lor Lu’s eyes were steady on the sergeant’s. “That is each person’s decision to make for themselves. Whenever someone asked Dove that question, he answered them as Jesus of Nazareth had: ‘By his fruits shall you know him.’ ” He paused. “What do you think?”